Shut Up, Norbert! (slaying the dragons that tell you you suck)

This is Norbert.

I honestly don’t remember where I acquired him, but he has been with me for a long time. The name was proposed by a former co-worker and it stuck. His deeper identity remained shrouded in secrecy to the more nuanced layers of my mind, as was no doubt his intention, until I heard the amazing Sue Campbell of Pages and Platforms speak to a group of writers about the resistance writers (and others) often experience in our work, as discussed by Stephen Pressfield and his book The War of Art. He refers to this phenomenon as “lizard brain”…